Management plans for 3 national nature parks submitted to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine

Since the solutions we implement in our work with Nature reserve fund protected areas must comply with Ukrainian legislation, we work closely with the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine.

Recently, our team was in Kyiv to meet with the new Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk and to present the management plans, which we developed together with three national nature parks – Cheremoshkyi, Vyzhnytskyi, and Hutsulshchyna.

A management plan is a mandatory document for the functioning of a protected area. It describes the current situation and sets strategic goals for the preservation of priority natural values for the next 10 years. The document also defines strategic tasks for the development of the institution in the areas of environmental monitoring, nature protection, recreation and environmental education, etc. This document describes clear and concrete steps to fulfill strategic objectives and achieve strategic goals for environmental values.

Our team, together with the teams of the protected areas’, worked for 2 years to develop the management plans. We involved 26 experts and actively engaged stakeholders to make the developed documents practical and useful for the protected areas.

We developed the management plans in accordance with Ukrainian legislation, but we were guided by the best international conservation practices collected in The Conservation Standards. Therefore, the developed documents are somewhat different from the projects used by protected areas before:

1. The approach used is to conserve natural habitats rather than individual species. The state of priority natural values, the threats to them, and the root causes of the threats were assessed.

2. The strategic goals for the state of priority natural values, as well as clear and specific results and the sequence of their achievement, have been defined. Importantly, the document also identifies the means, resources, and activities to be implemented to achieve these results. A detailed 5-year action plan with expected results, responsible executors, and the need for funding from various sources has been developed.

3. The plan should be adaptive, which is why the management plan has a section on monitoring the implementation of this plan. There are three stages of monitoring:

3.1. Monitoring the implementation of measures from the 5-year plan. It is conducted annually.

3.2. Monitoring the achievement of results. It is carried out depending on the timeframe provided for specific results

3.3. Monitoring the achievement of strategic goals. It is carried out based on the results of the implementation of the management plan.

Such a plan will help to better seek funding, as potential partners will clearly see the needs and projected impact of funding.

Stakeholders discussed the management plans in detail at production meetings. We held 5 such meetings in each of the three protected areas. Then, the documents were reviewed by the scientific and technical councils of the parks, and they provided their comments and suggestions. We processed them and submitted the drafts to the Ministry, and now we are waiting for comments and suggestions.

The last step is an order to approve the management plan. While waiting for the order, we continue to work on developing the documents for the next protected areas.